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Archive for the ‘Greeley/Swift/Somali controversy’ Category

Earlier I posted a news round-up of stories on the Somali refugee slasher, see it here. Then I mentioned there are three (at least) other news stories I wanted to spend more time on. I posted the first of thosehere.

And, this is the next one, from the Greeley Tribune. The story is not about how citizens of Greeley are worried about an Islam-inspired attack there, but whether the Ohio State attack might cause some Americans to say nasty things about Somalis in Greeley. Sheesh.

I took this photo of JBS (previously Swift & Co) headquarters in Greeley, CO on my tour of meatpackers of America this past summer. JBS is a Brazilian-owned company. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JBS_USA

Before I tell you the news from Greeley, know that we have an extensive archive on Greeley here at RRWgoing back years.

Greeley has a Somali refugee population because one of the largest FOREIGN-OWNED meatpackers (JBS) has lured them there to fill the company’s need for cheap legal immigrant labor.

Think about it! A foreign company gets to tap into cheap refugee labor (subsidized by welfare) and change your town forever!

After hearing of the attack at Ohio State University on Monday, Global Refugee Center Executive Director Erich Strehl’s first thoughts were for the victims. [Sure!—ed] Eleven were injured when Somali-born student Abdul Razak Ali Artan drove his car into students and then stabbed many others.

But Strehl’s mind quickly turned[I bet it did!—ed] to Artan’s Somalian heritage and the impact that could have on the community he serves in Greeley, a community already on edge after a contentious election season.

“I thought it was an unfortunate event to have happened at any time, but particularly now with the way things are in the United States with refugees and the program that resettles them,” Strehl said.

For the past several years, 100-200 Somalian refugees have taken up residence in Greeley. After a period of time, refugees are no longer tracked, free to go anywhere just like any American, Strehl said. So pinpointing an exact number of Somalian refugees in Greeley or Evans at any one time is difficult. There’s no indication any Somalian-born residents in northern Colorado have violent intentions, as the Ohio State student did. Strehl said attacks like the one at Ohio State serve to terrorize those in the Somali-American community as much as any other American. [The Islamist terrorist at Ohio State had shown no violent intentions either before he went on the murderous rampage on Monday!—ed]

“If anyone gets reprisal outside of the localized incident it would be those who have similarities to the individual carrying it out,” Strehl said.

Although Strehl hasn’t heard specifically of verbal or physical attacks against local Somalian refugees, he knows there is uncertainty and concern in the community. It was that way when Donald Trump became president-elect, particularly among Muslim refugees.

“The concern has only been heightened, particularly in this last attack,” Strehl said.

[….]

“We did communicate with local police and even the FBI,” Strehl said. “There didn’t seem to be any known threat against refugees here.”

This last is about making sure that they firmly implant the idea that the victims here are Somali refugees!

When you visit our Greeley archive, don’t miss Greeley’s rolein the formation of radical Islamic thinking! As they populate Greeley you can be sure the Islamic supremacist thinkers get a great chuckle out of that fact!

Also, we had written so much about Greeley and Swift a number of years ago, we had a separate category just for the on-going controversy there—-the epicenter of conflicts over Muslim demands for special accommodation in the workplace. Click here.

President Barack Obama has been quietly pushing new plans to bring thousands of additional Syrian refugees into the country, despite the concerns of state and county officials and the outrages committed by welfare-dependent migrants in Europe.

But, before I get to the important part, we posted the chart mentioned here last night (perhaps Breitbart is the original source of the chart?) about which cities received refugees in FY2015.

Huston says this:

A chart made earlier this year with information culled from the Refugee Processing Center, an agency of the U.S. Department of State, shows where Syrian refugees have already been placed in the U.S.

That is not accurate. It is a listing of all resettled refugees from all countries for FY2015. Syrians were only a tiny fraction.

Now this is the part of the Breitbart story that caught my eye!

A Greeley, CO county commissioner says they are not informed of arriving refugees! However, federal law says local governments must be consulted! Yet, this is one of the most common complaints we hear—local elected officials and citizens generally are completely left out of the information loop. Why? Because the contractors know that if they were completely open about what they are doing, people would object!

A lack of communication on the placement of migrants also exists. In Greeley, Colorado, Weld County Commissioner Sean Conway recently noted, “Many times we don’t even know that relocation is taking place until it’s going on.”

Visit this handy listand see that it is Lutheran Family Services Rocky Mountains (formerly ‘of Colorado’) that is resettling refugees in Greeley. I must say that the Lutherans are turning out to be among the most egregiously secretive of the federal contractors when it comes to being open and honest with local communities.

In fact it was this same agency that had hoped to open a new office in Casper, Wyoming whose leaders complained that the word got out to the public there prematurely before they could get their propaganda machine in place. See post here almost two years ago.

It will tell you how many refugees they plan to drop off in Weld County this year and will list all the welfare/medical/educational goodies you have available in your community for the “new Americans.”

For new readers we have written extensively on Greeley, Somalis and meatpacking. Click here for years of background posts. The Lutherans have been supplying local meatpackers with cheap immigrant laborers for years.

Is there a ‘Pocket of Resistance’ forming in Greeley? I would like to know!

Since we are closely following the controversy in Wyoming (see our previous post), let’s have a look at who exactly has expressed an interest in being the federal government contractor wishing to do business and resettle clients in Wyoming—Lutheran Family Services Rocky Mountains (LFSRM)sometimes known as Lutheran Family Services Colorado. (Why they need to operate under two names is beyond me!).

Rocky Mountain ‘Lutheran’ CEO Barclay makes just short of $200,000 in salary and benefits.

Let’s not tip our hand prematurely!

We first became aware of their role when it was learned that officials there were unhappy to be prematurely mentioned in publicity surrounding Wyoming Governor Mead’s proposed plan. They wanted the plans for Wyoming to be kept secret from the general public until they were further along.

“The largest refugee resettlement agency in the Rocky Mountain region.” they have “offices located in Denver, Colorado Springs, Fort Collins, Greeley/Evans and Fort Morgan, CO and Albuquerque, NM, and services provided in Wyoming,Montana and Western Nebraska.”

Although they do other work for children and families, they had time to resettle a whopping 1,567 refugees in FY12-13. Learn more here.

LFSRM is a subcontractor of the much larger Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services (LIRS) headquartered in Baltimore, MD. Just the other day we noted that LIRS has taken down its reference to an office in Casper, WY:

Although they don’t list grants they do list government contracts on page 9 (they took the word “government” out in this Form 990, but I checked previous ones to be sure in which they did categorize the majority of their income as from “government contracts.”). LOL! I think these so-called ‘non-profits’ are increasingly sensitive and don’t want you to know how much they depend on tax dollars. This is a business not a charity!

When you visit that previous Form 990, check out the big jump Barclay’s salary took in just two years from 2010-2012!

CEO James Barclay makes a cool $199,330 in salary and benefits and 4 other top executives are in the 6-figure category including James Horan who runs their refugee branch. (page 8). Barclay made $172,267 two years earlier.

Then here are some of their expenses (rounded numbers). Without your cash they could not exist!

Nearly $5 million in salary, benefits and employment expenses were paid out.

Occupancy and other office expenses approached $900,000.

$259,000 went for travel expenses (what for just the Rocky Mountain region?).

$55,000 was spent for conferences.

And, they even spent $32,000 lobbying (for what? more money from government?).

More on page 10.

In order to keep the government gravy train chugging along they have to bring in more and more refugees and likely they are running out of places for them in Colorado, thus their venture in Wyoming!

Every one of you concerned about refugee overload for your community must research who will benefit from more immigrants in your town or city because it is sad to say — this is all about money! (and about changing the demographic makeup of your town).

Several years ago we followed the controversy (mostly in Colorado) about Somalis working at meatpacking plants and demanding special prayer times in the workplace. Our entire category, entitled ‘Greeley/Swift Somali Controversy‘ should be useful for readers here. I didn’t realize, at the time (or I don’t think I did), what the role of Lutheran Family Services Colorado was in all of this—they likely were the source of all the Somali workers for meat packing companies. Adding insult to injury, Swift is a Brazilian owned company!

There is nothing earth-shattering in this article from MPR News, but it’s just further evidence of the role the meatpacking industry is playing in changing towns in America’s heartland with its avaricious desire for cheap labor—refugee labor! (Remember Senator Sessions called the meatpackers out here last year as a driving force behind amnesty).

We have been following this topic for going on seven years first brought to our attention by the turmoil created by Somali workers demanding workplace accommodation for their ‘religious’ requirements. We have an entire category entitled, Greeley/Swift/Somali controversy, where we archived posts on the topic.

But, you know what is really funny (sort of) is that the meatpackers apparently got sick of the Somali workers in some places and must have asked the US State Department (and their contractors***) for some more docile workers like these Burmese Karen Christians or the mostly Hindu Bhutanese refugees we have been bringing in ever since Bush “welcomed” them in 2007.

The refugees are basically cheap, legal, captive laborers which you subsidize through the myriad social services they receive (see our fact sheetfor the list of welfare programs open to refugees).

St. Paul is home to the largest Karen population in the country. But in recent years, Austin has attracted hundreds of the Karen and Karenni people.

Austin, a meatpacking town that has seen big demographic changes in the last few decades, started attracting workers from Mexico and Latin America in the early 1990s, followed by a wave of African immigrants. [The meatpackers used illegal labor from south of the border until the feds clamped down and then they discovered refugee labor thanks to Bill Clinton—ed]

The city’s growing Karen population is the first influx of minorities that has not been Latino or African, and the change has come fast.

According to the city’s Welcome Center, the number of Karen and Karenni residents in Austin nearly tripled to 1,224 this year, up from 463 in 2012. Driven out of their long-adopted home of Myanmar to camps in Thailand, the members of the two groups are flowing to the United States as refugees.

That means they can work legally, and some have replaced other immigrants at workplaces like Austin’s Hormel and Quality Pork processing plants,Austin schools superintendent David Krenz said.

Of course this massive plant in Austin would not have had Somali workers in the first place! (Pork of course!).

The Minnesota resettlement agencies affiliated with the federal government are listed here. They are subcontractors of the big Volags below. BTW, they call themselves Voluntary Agencies (Volags), but that is an obvious misnomer as most are nearly completely funded by tax dollars.

Somali overload in Greeley and Fort Morgan, Colorado is sending Somalis on a northward migration to settle in Wyoming according to good reporting from the Wyoming Tribune Eagle which I blasted the other day here for a careless hate-filled editorial accusing critics of Gov. Matt Mead’s plan“bigots”. This is the type of reporting (sans maudlin sob stories) and the facts they should be gathering before spewing out ill-informed editorials.

One fact that they need to pursue, however, in light of this article which I was sure was going to lead to—this is why we need to have a refugee resettlement program in Wyoming—is that if Lutheran Family Services Rocky Mountains, sets up shop in Wyoming, they will be bringing new refugees from Africa, Iraq, Iran and countries in Asia directly to Wyoming. The federal contractors do not take care of secondary migrants, like these Somalis in Cheyenne, who have been here for months or years. They are like anyone else who moves from one state to another and should not require special “services.”

Ask the folks in St. Cloud, Minnesotahow the Somali population expanded there at the same time the Lutheran’s opened their federally-funded office. Be sure to talk to the Mayor of Lewiston, Maine(the Somali capital of New England) too about what happened to them when the Somalis, resettled originally in Georgia, discovered the “services” Maine had to offer. The word “services” is, of course, the sanitized word for “welfare goodies.”

Keep in mind as you read this article that the meat packers (often foreign-owned companies) get cheap captive laborers and you, the American taxpayer, supports the rest of the refugee family’s life!

By the way, US Senator Jeff Sessions called out the meat packers as being among the chief lobbyists for amnesty, here.

Now to the story with an attractive and apparently likeable Somali refugee (with an African sob story history,why is that our problem?) as the star of the article (LOL! this must be J-school 101—start out with a sympathetic character to warm-up readers).

CHEYENNE — While Wyoming might be the only state in the country without an official refugee resettlement program, that doesn’t mean there aren’t former refugees living in the Cowboy State.

There are dozens, perhaps even several hundred, former refugees living in the Capital City alone.

Many of these people, like Abdirashid Noor, are from the war-torn east African nation of Somalia.

Read the many paragraphs about the hell hole that is East Africa.

Noor’s life changed forever in 2007 when he was accepted into the University of Northern Colorado.

Be sure to go back and read the interesting history I posted just a few weeks ago about Greeley, CO and the Univ. of Northern Colorado’s role in the history of modern day Islamic extremism.

The Tribune Eagle story continues! The migration is on……

Greeley connection

Noor came to Greeley, Colorado, to study accounting at UNC. As fate would have it, when he arrived, he found that the city was home to a growing Somali community.

Unlike Noor, the majority of Somalis in Greeley did not come to attend the university -n they came to work in a nearby meat packing facility operated by the Brazilian meat-processing company JBS.

“When people come into this country and they don’t know the language, they have a lot of issues getting jobs,” Noor said.

“If you can’t communicate with other people and you can’t understand what other people are saying, they aren’t going to hire you.

“So the only area where people from east Africa or Somalia get hired is JBS or another meat plant. They don’t require communication skills as long as you can do the work,” he said.

Because jobs at the meat plant are typically low-paying, many of the Somali employees in Greeley rely on government subsidized housing programs like Section 8.

As the Somali population in Greeley grew, so did the waiting lists for programs like Section 8.

Colette West, co-executive director of the Global Refugee Center in Greeley, said the waiting list for housing subsidies in Colorado can be as long as three years. [That means needy Americans wait too!—ed]

Noor and many others in Greeley’s Somali community began looking north to Cheyenne for affordable housing options.

Mike Stanfield, executive director of the Cheyenne Housing Authority, said, “Some folks (in Colorado) found out the waiting list (for subsidized housing programs) was still open (in Cheyenne) and they came up here and applied.”

According to Noor, many of the people in Cheyenne’s Somali community commute to Greeley to work in the meat plant. Others, he said, have taken jobs here in places like the Wal-Mart Distribution Center west of town.

“Navigating through the system” means they need people in-the-know to direct them to all of the available social services—housing, healthcare, food stamps, interpreters, education for the kids and other GOVERNMENT assistance!

In places like Greeley, where Somali communities have existed for years, there is a system in place to help new immigrants gain access to services and educational programs. But because the Somali community here is newer, those services are sometimes harder to find in Cheyenne.

“They are going to need help navigating all the systems,” West said. “It’s very hard when you don’t speak the language.”

[….]

And as the city’s Somali population grows, so will the need for services.

So, someone like Noor will be paid with taxpayer dollars to be sure to get his fellow countrymen on the taxpayer- funded “social services” roster in Laramie County, Wyoming!

For ambitious readers, we have 90 previous postsin a category entitled ‘Greeley/Swift/Somali controversy’ going back at least 5 years.

Did you know that one of the founders of Al-Qaeda spent six months in Greeley, CO in the late 1940’s early 50’s and his view of decadent Americans gyrating with men and women’s bodies touching at a protestant church dance inspired his hatred for America and his subsequent work in designing a manifesto of sorts which became the seminal work and inspiration behind militant Islam which to this day is terrorizing the world?

Fifty-four years ago [now 65 years ago–ed], an Egyptian scholar arrived at the Colorado State College of Education in Greeley. He stayed for six months, sat in on a few classes, and did his best to sample day-to-day life in post-war America. When he left, he was quickly forgotten by the tiny community.

But Sayyid Qutb didn’t forget Greeley.

Time passed and the world changed. Colorado State College became the University of Northern Colorado and Greeley grew like the rest of the state. Qutb (pronounced KUH-tahb) returned to Egypt, where he became the foremost Islamic thinker of his time.

His articles and books were scholarly but passionate examinations of history, politics, and religion. He immersed himself in the Koran, compared it to the world around him, and came to a grave conclusion. Though the modern, liberal societies of the West preached freedom of religion, in truth, they undermined it. Religion and modernity, he concluded, could not coexist.

Qutb saw salvation in Islam, a religion that he believed offered true freedom. But for Islam to survive, a jihad would have to be fought to rid society of the West’s secular ways. Qutb envisioned an Islamic society ruled by Islamic law.

This was subversive stuff, even in the Middle East, and it wasn’t long before Qutb was thrown into prison, where he would stay for more than 10 years. Not surprisingly, prison only hardened his views. Qutb rewrote many of his earlier books and produced new ones at an astonishing pace, including a 30-volume masterwork entitled In the Shade of the Qur’an.

And through it all – right up until the day in 1966 when he was executed – Qutb remembered Greeley. What he had seen in those few months stayed with him through the decades and filled him with fear, disgust, and contempt. What he saw in Greeley made him hate America.

The story doesn’t end on the Egyptian gallows. In death, Qutb’s work became even more influential. Milestones, his best-known book, has been published in nearly 2,000 editions, and though many of his books have been banned in Egypt and other moderate Arab states, millions continue to illicitly circulate throughout the Middle East and over the Internet.

His writings have become both the inspiration and the blueprint for the fundamentalist jihad that now engulfs the world. Qutb’s work is to militant Islam what Das Kapital was to communism or Mein Kampf was to the Nazis.In American terms, he is Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Paine, all rolled into one. His disciples include Anwar Sadat’s assassins, and Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the Egyptian cleric convicted in 1995 of plotting to blow up several New York landmarks. They include militant groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad. And they include a Saudi militant named Osama bin Laden.

Read it all—it is fascinating! And, I doubt many Greeley residents or students at the University of Northern Colorado have a clue about the role their quiet American town played in world history.

Skip to April 2014 and we have Somali Muslim refugees instructing refugee role-playing. A propaganda stunt?

Greeley, CO became a US State Department “preferred” resettlement site a few years ago when Somali refugees were needed as laborers at local meatpacking plants.

We have an extensive archive on the controversy that erupted over demands regarding prayer times in the workplace, here (Greeley/Swift/Somali controversy) which is one way Muslims have begun to successfully change America (Al-Hijra!). Qutb would be proud!

Last week, the Global Refugee Center, which was born out of the 2008 protests by Somali refugees in Greeley, participated in this propaganda stunt to continue to soften-up (welcoming!) Greeley for more refugees that are on the way.

We’ve been following the ups and downs of the Somali migration to Ft. Morgan for several years. The mass migration to the town began in 2008 right after the big blow up in Greeley when Somalis demanded special prayer times at a Swift meatpacking plant there. A lot of the Somalis were fired and moved on to Ft. Morgan to work for Cargill. Here is one poston the move.

Ft. Morgan political leaders have knocked themselves out trying to send the politically correct message that diversity brings strength, but every once in awhile they have a flareup by some who don’t want the ‘change’ being brought to their community by BIG MEAT.

Senator Sessions says we need to slow down that change for everyone’s sake. By the way, it was Senator Sessions who called out the meatpackers as major lobbyists behind the so-called ‘Comprehensive Immigration Reform’ bill as it passed the Senate.

KUSA – They left Somalia and other parts of eastern Africa to escape unpredictable violence, but now Fort Morgan police say the town’s refugee community is being victimized because of their race and heritage.

In the past week and a half, multiple cars have been vandalized, left with broken windows and spray painted with racial slurs.

“Get out of town. Go back to your country,” said Khadar Ducaale, of what was written. “It’s been very frustrating, at the same time, it’s been scary. We don’t know who is responsible.”

“We left our home country back in Africa for lack of security and instability, “said Abdi Wahab, whose car windows were broken. “It feels like we might be having the same problem we left our countries for now.”

There are hundreds of east Africans who’ve been given refuge by the U.S. government to live and work in Fort Morgan. Many work at the Cargill meat plant. They said vandalism to their vehicles has happened several times in the past. 9News reported on eight cars hit in 2011.

[…..]

Fort Morgan Police said they believe the car windows were shot out by a BB gun. A town spokesperson said a hate crime investigation is underway, but there are no suspects.

Click here for our complete archive on Ft. Morgan. They likely even had an honor killing there a few years ago.

I first really began to understand this driver of the State Department’s Refugee Resettlement program here in 2008 when I read about Bill Clinton importing Bosnian so-called “refugees” for meatpackers in Iowa in the mid-1990s.

You see, readers, the meatpackers had discovered cheap immigrant labor from south of the border, but the enterprise became too risky as the feds began busting them in some highly publicized ICE raids. So, where did they turn…to refugees of course.

Heck they are legal workers and they are basically captive labor—they can’t go home (although some very unhappy ones do find the money to return to their homeland). In addition, you, the taxpayers, help to subsidize them with ‘social services’ while the meatpacker reaps the rewards—quite a business model!

For awhile the meatpacking giants were enthralled with the Somalis, but they came with one serious problem—they are Muslim and they began demanding workplace accommodation for their Islamic religious practices. We have a whole category entitled, Greeley/Swift/Somali controversywith 87 posts in it (here) for your further edification. However, in the story I am about to relate, they wouldn’t have hired Somalis anyway—it’s a pork processing plant.

What to do? What to do? We will tell the State Department to bring us some docile workers like the Christian Chin or Karen, or the Bhutanese/Nepalese who don’t complain so much. And, I’m convinced that somewhere in the bowels of Washington there was such a conversation between big business lobbyists and the federal government.

My scenario is not so farfetched when you see what is going on with the Gang of Eight being driven by Big Business and Grover Norquist, and you know this immigrant legalization push is not about “humanitarianism!”

COLUMBUS JUNCTION, Iowa (AP) — The first Chin Burmese student arrived at Wilma Sime Roundy Elementary School three years ago, a smiling preschooler whose father often checked on his progress.

The school had long been accustomed to educating the children of the Mexicans, Hondurans and Salvadorans who came to work at the sprawling Tyson Foods pork processing plant that sits outside this town of 2,000. But then, principal Shane Rosenberg recalled, Tyson informed school leaders that a new group of workers was coming – the Chin, a largely Christian ethnic minority who were fleeing their homeland in western Myanmar to avoid persecution.

Readers keep reading through all the paragraphs about how wonderful the newcomers are (and surely many are nice people). Everything is just great don’t ya’ know! Then we get to the problems …

Tyson spokesman: Nah! We don’t favor refugees (tell that to the Hispanics!)

Tyson and other meatpacking companies have increasingly recruited non-Latino workers in recent years, including Burmese, Sudanese and others, said Mark Grey, director of the Iowa Center for Immigrant Leadership and Integration at University of Northern Iowa. Since a 2008 raid of a Postville, Iowa, slaughterhouse, where 389 immigrants were arrested, companies have become more careful to avoid hiring employees who may have entered the country illegally, he said.

Refugees are in the country legally and may apply for citizenship within five years.

Tyson spokesman Gary Mickelson denied the company was favoring refugees over others, saying the industry has long attracted immigrants for entry-level jobs that do not require experience or English skills. The makeup of its workforce shifts as new immigrant groups come to the U.S., he said. [There is also a tax break for hiring certain immigrant workers that no one is willing to talk about!—ed]

A little multi-culti friction has developed:

But in town, both the Chin and Spanish-speaking communities feel that more Chin are being hired at the expense of Latinos, which has caused some friction, said Cristina Ortiz, a doctoral student in anthropology who moved to Columbus Junction four years ago to study the town.

“Latinos and Chin people recognize they both have the same goals in life,” she says. “That is to make their lives better and provide for their families and live a tranquil life. But in a certain sense, they are in competition with each other. They are applying for the same jobs. They have the same skills. And that’s tricky. Obviously there is some tension there.”

Burmese Chin are arriving from other states where it’s tough to get a job (But wait! Isn’t the Gang of Eight telling us we need millions more low-skilled laborers).

In Columbus Junction, Mickelson said, the first five Burmese workers were hired as part of a recruitment effort in Illinois and later encouraged friends and relatives to apply. Burmese started arriving from Indiana, Texas, Florida and other states where they say jobs were harder to come by.

Problems at first with drunk driving, public urination, a few suicides, but once the women got there things calmed down. Now it’s just a housing shortage. But, AP wants you to know that Columbus Junction will be just fine.

City officials say some of the first arrivals abused alcohol, which had previously not been as cheap or available to them. Public urination and intoxication and drunken driving were common. But the police chief and other officials warned community leaders about their expectations, and as more women and children arrived, the problems have dissipated.

Two refugees have committed suicide and a third was found drowned in a river near the Tyson plant, said police Chief Donnie Orr. A shortage of mental health and substance abuse treatment is a problem, Ortiz said.

But refugees and city leaders agree the biggest challenge now is finding housing for the newcomers. City officials say there are hardly any available rental apartments, which go for about $450 a month for three bedrooms.

Hey, here is an idea! How about if Tyson Foods build some housing out of their profits and not with taxpayer money. And. while they are at it they could kick in the money for the school system to pay for the ESL teachers.

And, immigrant workers to go with it!

Honest to goodness, that is part of the prescription offered by AP reporter cum opinion writer, Hope Yen, in a story headlined: ‘Census shows record 1 in 3 US counties now dying.’

And, the only way to save them is to increase the population and pour in the immigrants as the baby boomers start leaving this life. But, she offers not one shred of evidence that pouring in the immigrants brings economic recovery. Frankly, the only economic boost poor and uneducated immigrants might bring a city or county is because with them come FEDERAL WELFARE dollars!

Muslim employees have clashed with the JBS Swift & Co. meatpacking plant in Greeley, Colo., over taking breaks to offer prayers, as called for by their religion. Here, some of the employees are seen gathering at Lincoln Park in Greeley. Photo by Sara Loven, Daily Tribune via AP

Longtime readers here know what meatpackers have brought to some towns in the Midwest and South—demands for religious accommodation for Muslims, ethnic squabbles, crime, Section 8 housing, overstressed school systems, food stamp fraud and the list goes on.

So, to Ms Yen and her comrades—population increases will not save a county or city when the population is an economic drain and causes social upheaval—-just ask France (Moroccans), Germany (Turks), Greece (Afghans) and the UK (Pakis) if the immigrant hordes have brought an overall benefit to their economies. Heck, we recently learned that Germany was sending its elderly pensioners to Eastern Europe and Asia for their nursing home care because the Germans couldn’t afford their old people.

Here is the AP story, but first read about how immigration is killing Dekalb County, Georgia(here yesterday). Why do these pro-immigration news(?) reports never bother to mention the downside? And, you might also re-visit Professor Kotkin who also jumps to the conclusion that more diversity brings positive change here.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A record number of U.S. counties – more than 1 in 3 – are now dying off, hit by an aging population and weakened local economies that are spurring young adults to seek jobs and build families elsewhere.

New 2012 census estimates released Thursday highlight the population shifts as the U.S. encounters its most sluggish growth levels since the Great Depression.

The findings also reflect the increasing economic importance of foreign-born residents as the U.S. ponders an overhaul of a major 1965 federal immigration law. Without new immigrants, many metropolitan areas such as New York, Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh and St. Louis would have posted flat or negative population growth in the last year. [Why the assumption that population growth means economic growth, unless we are counting state and federal welfare dollars?—ed]

“Immigrants are innovators, entrepreneurs, they’re making things happen. They create jobs,” said Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican, at an immigration conference in his state last week. Saying Michigan should be a top destination for legal immigrants to come and boost Detroit and other struggling areas, Snyder made a special appeal: “Please come here.”

Frankly, Governor Snyder that is gobbledegook! MOST immigrants starting businesses could never get the business off the ground without government support like the micro-loans supported by taxpayer dollars we are distributing like Pez candy! Just look around your own local city—how many immigrant-run restaurants survive more than a year or so? Now, convenience stores might survive a little longer as they are scamming SNAP (food stamp) programs to keep themselves afloat.

Again, this scribe at AP reports as a good thing for (we presume) the economy that the US population is growing thanks to immigrants. But, let me ask, is there some point when population has grown enough? Is it just possible that some towns and counties are going to decline in population? Or, is there no upper limit?

….the U.S. population as a whole continues to grow, boosted by immigration from abroad and relatively higher births among the mostly younger migrants from Mexico, Latin America and Asia.

Quoting a sociology professor at the Univ. of New Hampshire: solve your economic woes with something dramatic—get a meatpacking plant!

Unless something dramatic changes – for instance, new development such as a meatpacking plant to attract young Hispanics – these areas are likely to have more and more natural decrease.”

It’s not the immigrants, it is the federal money!

Near the very end of this pro-open borders pitch, comes one line that is really closer to the truth about how some cities are surviving and some aren’t—-those surviving are at the receiving end of a federal money pipeline!

Since 2010, many of the fastest-growing U.S. metro areas have also been those that historically received a lot of federal dollars…

So what happens when the federal flow begins to slow? Get ready for chaos as all the minority and immigrant groups, used to surviving on ‘social welfare’, see the money dry up. This can’t go on forever. We all know that.

About the photo: We reported this news from Colorado back in 2008. LOL! See Greeley 2012trying to get money out of the meatpackers for the educational costs associated with immigrant kids!

For new readers: If you would like to know more about the multi-culti joys of meatpacking towns, visit our Greeley/Swift/Somali controversy category (86 posts!). Or, for other places in the US where the refugee program via the US State Department supplies meatpacking labor, just type ‘meatpacker’ into our search function.

Yesterday, I thought I would check and see what was new in Greeley (Weld County) Colorado after all of the turmoil there in 2008 over a demand by newly arrived Somali workers at meatpacking plants to have special break times during Ramadan. At first Swift caved in to their demands and then all hell broke loose with the other ethnic workers, especially the Hispanics, who protested the special treatment for Muslim workers. The Somalis walked out and many were fired. A lot of the fired Somali workers from Greeley moved on to Cargill at Ft. Morgan (but that is a story for another day).

At the time we created an entire category on the controversy (here it is) and here is just one of many posts summarizing what happened. In a nutshell, the big meatpackers were being raided by the feds looking for illegal workers in the early to mid-2000s. So they went to “legal” refugee labor (thanks to the US State Department) and welcomed the Somalis, thereby causing themselves a different sort of problem. Cities like Greeley and neighboring Ft. Morgan initially swooned over the joys of diversity brought to their cities.

Changing the subject for a bit….

Was the Muslim Brotherhood born in Greeley? Say what!

In an incredible twist of fate, the answer is Yes! in a roundabout way. See this post I wrote about Greeley in 2008 (and btw, the State Department set up a refugee office in 2007 for Greeley and Ft. Morgan in advance of the trouble that began with Swift the following year).

Do you know the name Sayed Qutb considered one of the greatest thinkers in the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood? In 1952 he studied at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley and was appalled by the decadence of American society (yes, in 1952!). He was especially offended by dancing he observed at a church function and saw what we now commonly call Shariah Law—a complete government/religious system—as the solution.

After returning to Egypt he joined the fledgeling (at that time) Muslim Brotherhood and wrote some of its earlier treatises that Islamists still look to today for guidance. He became one of its preeminent leaders and was executed by Nasser along with other Muslim Brotherhood leaders in 1966. Think about it, his early work has led to al-Qaeda and to the now Muslim Brotherhood controlled Egypt.

But I digressed! Back to Greeley 2012.

Wouldn’t Qutb be astounded to see Muslims gaining a foothold in Greeley!

I haven’t visited the Greeley/Ft. Morgan topic for awhile, so just checking around I found this article from a few days ago about how the school system in one portion of Weld County can’t handle the costs of all the refugee students they must educate.

This is not the only place where a school system is struggling with large numbers of third worlders who don’t speak English. I recently let two previous stories pass me by (didn’t post them) on the same subject—school system problems—one was from Burlington, VT, the other was from a Texas city, can’t remember which city.

The county wants Swift (a Brazilian company), the “source of its problems,” to help pay for their schools! And, why not? I’ve argued for years that these meatpackers get the cheap “legal” immigrant labor and then social services, schools (and police) in the surrounding community get the extra costs dumped on them!

GREELEY – Born in a Kenyan refugee camp, Asha Abdi spoke no English when she arrived to the U.S. more than five years ago. Today, she’s fluent, thanks to her own desire to learn and the work of her teachers at Weld County’s School District 6. [Abdi’s is the inevitable appealing face of the refugee that most mainstream articles begin with—ed!]

A senior at Greeley West High School, Abdi is a Somali and, although she is thousands of miles from her homeland, she is far from alone. The 17-year-old is one of 434 refugee students who attend schools in the district. Her two sisters and a brother are among them, part of an immigrant population that includes thousands more students who speak dozens of different languages. More than a quarter of District 6 students are learning English as a second language.

Like Asha and her siblings, many are the children of parents drawn to Weld County by jobs at one of Northern Colorado’s largest employers, JBS USA in Greeley.

Their swelling ranks have helped to create one of the more diverse student bodies in Colorado. But there’s a high cost associated with educating these children, an expense that is fast becoming an unmanageable burden for District 6, leaving it with fewer dollars for other programs.

[….]

Faced with shrinking funding from the state and federal government, District 6 is now looking for help from the very source of its problem: JBS itself.

Then get this! They want to make you think that all these refugees just showed up in Weld and Morgan counties spontaneously in 2008! In 2007, in one of the first posts I ever wrote at RRW, I told you that the State Department was opening a refugee resettlement office for Greeley and Ft. Morgan, here (unfortunately the link at the Greeley Tribune is now gone!).This infusion of refugee labor was planned in advance!

Families like Abdi’s have been coming here since the spring of 2008, when 10 students from Somali families who got jobs at JBS enrolled in the school district. Today, the District 6 student population comprises 20 nationalities, including children from Myanmar, Guatemala, Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Indonesia.

So JBS Swift has to pay-up, after all they are responsible (along with the US State Department and the Refugee contractors who are the head-hunters for Swift?). But, then that is us—the US taxpayer!—we have helped make this happen through our silence!

Nancy Matchett, an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Northern Colorado and director of the Institute of Professional Ethics, thinks District 6 has a good case to make. [Does Nancy know about Qutb and his ‘education’ at UNC?—ed]

“They have a kind of duty of charity to give to the school districts,” she said of JBS. “They are primarily responsible for this large influx (of refugees) that places a burden on the local school system. We don’t have a political system that is set up in such a way to absorb those costs.”

But there is a benefit to us! We get DIVERSITY! So much CULTURE! Heck, we get to learn about the massacres of villagers in the third world! That is worth something, isn’t it?

District 6 educators say they appreciate the global perspective that the refugee students bring into their classrooms.[LOL! just broke the BS meter—ed]

“They add so much culture to our community and to our district,” said Kathi VanSoest, the district’s executive director of student support services. “It’s been a great experience while also being a very impactful experience.”

[…..]

They also tell of atrocities, including the massacre of fellow villagers. “They’ve seen some things that you don’t know how they’re OK,” Hoff said.